From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
The Other Campaign
A series of posters argues that "anti-Semitism is anti-me." What could this mean?
I couldn't help noticing, on a telephone kiosk in midtown Manhattan, a poster of an Asian child admonishing: "Anti-Semitism is anti-me." My eyes scanned to the bottom of the poster for an explanation. There I read that "anti-Semitism is anti-everybody" and was directed to the Anti-Defamation League's Web site to help fight anti-Semitism.
Mystified, I tried to think what exactly a poster like this was supposed to mean: Be careful being anti-Semitic; you might accidentally offend an Asian-American if he's adopted by Jews? Don't be anti-Semitic because we all come from Adam and Eve so, like, we're all related?
I walked on and came to another kiosk, this one sporting a white Lutheran minister of androgynous appearance. OK, I thought, perhaps this one makes sense: To a man (or woman) of the cloth, anti-Semitism runs counter to the teachings of the church. Or perhaps this minister used to be a rabbi but converted? Eventually I came upon a third poster: Apparently, anti-Semitism is also anti-Naomi Campbell; for there she was, making the same "anti-me" point.
So now I had a black woman, an Asian child and a gender-vague minister being offended by anti-Semitism. Perhaps the point of the campaign was really to equate anti-Semitism with discrimination against minorities that are more visibly minorities--to remind people that anti-Semitism is no different from racism.
Could that really be it? Could the message really be that shallow? A friend suggested that, to counteract the accusation that Zionism is racism and that Judaism is a racist religion, the ADL was trying to show that, in some sense, anyone could be Jewish. Perhaps the ADL was trying to appeal to the simplistic idiocy of some on the left by using their own language, showing them the error of their ways by offering superficial images of diversity.
Or maybe the campaign was designed to do battle with the new, left-wing anti-Semitism, half of which masquerades as anti-Zionism and the other half of which used 9/11 to suspend a "tasteful" self-censorship on the question of the Jews and start asking: "Just how much of the world do the Jews control?"
I decided to call the ADL. "Anti-Semitism is indivisible," explained Graham Cannon, its director of marketing and communications. He assured me twice that the organization was very proud of the campaign. "You can't isolate one group and hate them. You can't split these things." Mr. Cannon added that the ads would continue, with new images replacing these three every two months.
When he told me that the ads also would be going up around college campuses across the country, I asked whether perhaps the campaign was meant to counter the new left-wing anti-Semitism. He didn't address this point at all, ultimately directing me to Abraham Foxman's quote from the press release: "The new campaign, aimed to reach and engage a broad and diverse audience, is designed to change the perception that anti-Semitism is strictly a problem for Jews. Anti-Semitism is everyone's problem. Anti-Semitism in a society is an expression of a hatred of the other, it is contrary to our values of democracy, diversity and acceptance."
We were back to that. Does America really need reminding of this? Surely some Muslim neighborhoods in Paris would benefit more. Worse, the posters seem to exploit the idea that Jews have joined some sort of "minority" club, saying: "Hey, guys, we're one of you. We're in the same boat."
This is a dubious strategy--over the years it has led to easy assumptions of friendly collaboration that foundered in real life. It is also a misleading one, an attempt to re-bond by means of the tenuous, artificial, lowest-common-denominator connection of "oppression." We're not being told that anti-Semitism is bad in and of itself, and why, but that it's bad because it's like being racist, dude.
Anti-Semitism isn't anti-everybody, Mr. Foxman. It's just anti-Jewish.
Ms. Gorin is a contributing editor of JewishWorldReview.com and FoxNews.com.
